Rochelle Moulton turns independent consultants into authorities. The author of The Authority Code: How To Position, Monetize And Sell Your Expertise, she has been called “an emotional Red Bull” for her balance of inspiration and practical advice.

In today's episode of Smashing the Plateau, you will learn how to go from expertise to authority, along with big financial benefits.

Rochelle and I discuss:

• Some of the differences between experts and authorities [03:18]
• Patterns that emerge from experts that effectively market their authority [08:54]
• The most important sales target when you market your authority [11:24]
• How taking a stand can generate risk in your head [14:23]
• How long it may take to build a financially successful authority business [19:11]
• Business model differences between experts and authorities [20:55]

Learn more about Rochelle at https://rochellemoulton.com/.

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https://smashingtheplateau.com/openhouse

You hear people say, "you need to work on the

business", that's built into my day.

It's baked into everything that I, my clients and anybody you'll

encounter, who's an authority.

They've baked it into their business.

And by that, I mean that you're writing, you're thinking, you're speaking.

You are connecting with influencers in the sense of people who

influence your ideal audience.

Welcome to Smashing the Plateau.

We help consultants, coaches, entrepreneurs, and small business

owners build their business after a long career as an employed professional.

We believe you should be able to do what you love and get paid

what you're worth, consistently.

I'm your host, David Shriner-Cahn.

Today on Smashing the Plateau, I'm speaking with Rochelle Moulton.

Rochelle turns independent consultants into authorities.

In today's episode, you will learn how to go from expertise to authority,

along with big financial benefits.

Stay with us to hear all the detail.

Are you building your consulting, coaching or small business following a

long career as an employed professional.

Are you tired of trying to build your business alone?

Come meet other consultants, coaches, and small business owners on Friday,

August 26th, at 12 noon Eastern Time.

We're having an open house so that you can experience a bit of what we do in

the Smashing the Plateau Community.

You'll have an opportunity to think more critically about your

work, meet colleagues who want to support your success and learn how

a curated community can empower you to make progress toward your goals.

To register for the open house, go to smashingtheplateau.com/openhouse.

That's smashingtheplateau.com/openhouse.

At Smashing the Plateau, our mission is empowering high achieving professionals

to do what they love and get paid what they're worth as entrepreneurs.

Now let's welcome, Rochelle Moulton.

Rochelle turns independent consultants into authorities.

The author of The Authority Code, how to position, monetize

and sell your expertise.

She has been called an "emotional red bull" for her balance and

inspiration and practical advice.

Rochelle, welcome to the show, great to have you on.

Thanks so much, David, I'm really excited for this.

Me too.

So how did you end up becoming somebody who is an expert in turning

consultants into authorities?

It's an interesting niche and not something that a lot of people do.

True.

I spent most of my career building consulting practices

inside big consulting firms.

And at one point I even turned around the arm of a fortune 500 company, the

consulting arm that was failing miserably.

So I've spent all of that time there.

And one of the things that I learned in the course of, particularly my longest

in my 10 years with a big firm and partnership there was, the difference

between people who were perceived as authorities and those who weren't.

So it's been an interesting, 13 years now doing this.

Wow.

One of the things that you write about in The Authority Code, is the difference

between expertise and authority.

And I wondered if you could explain what is the difference.

Yeah.

So expertise to me is deep knowledge like an expert commands, deep knowledge, a

lot and a lot about a particular area.

Authority.

Here's the thing about authority.

I used to think that authority was just about building your

expertise publicly so that people would hire you or buy your stuff.

But it's really about value creation because when you have authority,

which I think of as the power to reach and influence and impact your

market segment, you get to choose.

You have a whole bunch of choices.

You get to choose who you really care about and who you want to serve.

You get to choose the revolution that you want to lead.

You get to choose how you want to work.

So you can work in your genius zone, delivering your expertise the way that

you want to, you get to really think about and balance growing revenue with

also building time and flexibility so that you can create the life that

you really want with this business.

And then at the end of the day, you get to charge, if you want to,

based on the value that you provide to your ideal clients and buyers.

when you have authority, you're always building value for

your clients and for yourself.

Rochelle, aren't those various attributes that you

just mentioned, attributes that most experts want to have, particularly,

like I'm thinking about consultants that start their business after a long

career as an employed professional, which is, a large part of our audience.

And I think about those folks and they've generally worked 20 to 30 years

or more in some mid to high level role.

And like not the entire career in a high level role, but they've ended

their employed career, usually in a mid to high level role.

And they frequently, leave the corporate or organizational world,

because they want more control over what they do and how they do it.

And it strikes me that what you just described is all about control

over what you do and how you do it.

It is, but it's also more because the, what you

say is exactly right, experts and authorities want those same things.

The authority has built a system to bring it to them.

That's really the difference because you can be an expert and have 20 people in the

world know who you are and what you do.

And you could create a really good business if you have the right kind

of business model, but authority is about spreading it further and wider.

And it's more about influence, because you can be the, this expert

and I would argue you can't be an authority without being an expert.

First authority is just adding some things on top of being an expert.

But especially for someone who's been mid-career when you're going out on your

own, any authority you've already built from your corporate life, say doing

speeches or appearing on podcasts or interviews, all of that can translate into

this next thing that you're doing and help you get all of those things that you want.

And yeah.

Control, is a big thing I know for myself, that's one of the big reasons I

started my own solo practice was control.

Right?

So you can have a well functioning business that is making good money as an

expert, but you're not yet an authority.

Yes.

Absolutely.

And there will be people who never want to become authorities who say, you know what,

I'm not interested in writing about this.

I'm not interested in being on podiums.

I just want to do my thing.

And you absolutely can do that if you've positioned yourself appropriately.

So that you're attracting the right clients.

And if you are regularly making sure that you are, you're building

your pipeline, the future work.

Cause sometimes what happens when people first leave corporate is they

get two or three assignments and they're a hundred percent focused on that.

And then when they're done, it's crickets, there's nothing else in the pipeline.

So as long as you build the pipeline, absolutely, one does not

have to become an authority to be successful in the expertise world.

All right.

So then what do experts seek when they want authority, that

they're not already getting?

If they have a well functioning business as an expert.

It's usually pipeline.

It's usually a pipeline they want to have more things that I hate to call

them deals, but more opportunities in the pipeline so that they're not

always having to go out and sell.

And when I say pipeline, it's having those opportunities there

and it's also not having to.

Putting sell in quote marks, sell the way we tend to think of selling,

which is convincing someone to buy us.

So they don't want to do that.

That's the most common thing that I see when people come to me the second,

which might be true of some of your audience is where there's a mission.

And yeah, they like to make money from the mission, but

the first thing is the mission.

And that might be someone who perhaps says, has retired in the

sense that they have an income.

And they've said, what I really want to do is I want to work more on X, an

issue, a population, whatever that is.

It's not a non for profit, but it's mission driven first.

So those are the two things I, I tend to see.

And what are some of the patterns that you've seen in experts

that successfully become authorities?

Okay.

So the first thing, I write about this a lot in the book.

I think of it as three things, right?

You have to position yourself in particular and your business, right?

So that you're, you've got the right positioning for the messaging

that you're putting together.

Then you have to monetize your business.

And by that, I just mean you have to have the right mix of services and

products at the right prices so that you can attract the clients that you want.

And you can take care of yourself, whatever that looks like.

You can build a hundred thousand dollars business.

You could build a million dollar business.

It's monetizing the expertise that you do have.

And then the third piece is selling.

And I use selling in a very broad way, in the sense that selling is also about

letting people know that you exist and that you have a point of view.

And so selling is about publishing and that's the single biggest difference.

So if I've got my head down and I'm working on my business and I'm, I've got

clients and everything is fine when I want authority, the first thing I'm going

do is I'm going start publishing because that's how I'm going build an audience.

And publishing can be, traditional in the sense of something written and, written

is especially good for experts because it's an easy way for us to understand

what you're saying and to react.

And it can also be speaking, but it doesn't have to be speaking at

conferences, which of course took a nose dive over the last two or three

years, but it can also mean things like hosting a podcast or being a

guest on a podcast where people can hear your voice and how you think

about the things that are important.

So it's, I think of it as becoming visible, is that first step where

you become willing to take a stand for what you believe in the unique

tenants of your consultancy, your belief system, and you start

committing those to the public space.

And the, almost the second you do that, even if the audience, you have

an audience of one like your mother or your kids, the second you do that you

start to invite comments and reactions.

And so what happens, is your point of view gets tighter and it, when

other people, your ideal clients and buyers, buy into your worldview,

they start spreading it for you.

When you're selling your authority, who is the most important

sales target, particularly initially.

I think ideal clients and buyers,

that's how I would approach it.

Later, then we can talk about, an authority circle, which are people,

and when I say influencers, I don't mean like social media influencers.

people who influence your clients and buyers to do the kinds of

things you want them to do.

So you start and I'll always argue, start with an email list.

It's really simple.

And it's the one thing that you own, you can create an amazing space

on LinkedIn, for example, but if LinkedIn decides they don't like you

anymore, that can cause you a problem.

So start with email, start building a list, have a, an approach to

build that list and start writing about, or you could video too.

I have clients who've done video because.

They didn't particularly care to write.

So pick the medium, whether that's written video audio, or even better, still

mix them up and just start publishing.

Just start.

That's the key.

Yeah.

Is there a frequency that you recommend sending stuff out by email?

It really depends on your audience.

That's a question I hear a lot.

I know.

And it's funny.

I just had a discussion recently with my podcast cohost about daily

emails versus non-daily emails.

It really depends on you and your audience.

Generally speaking, you're going want to hit them at least once a month.

I have a client who does that religiously and has very good

success with a very small email list, but that's a particular audience.

There are others, I would say generally weekly is good if only because it's

helping you have a deadline and have some regularity, touching your audience

still, it's better to do something, that's half baked, than nothing.

And I'm going say that one more time.

It's better to do something half baked than nothing.

And here's why, because you might say, oh, if I'm going be an authority,

everything has to be perfect.

But the problem is it never is perfect and it needs to hit your audience.

And so I'd rather encourage somebody to experiment than to do nothing.

And what's interesting is sometimes the one that you worry about the

most, and if you, your finger hovers over the send button because you're

convinced people are not going like it.

And they're going, hit back at you on something.

Those are usually the ones that are that people go, wow, this is really great.

I love this.

So experimenting with how you express your point of view in any

of those three mediums is really critical to start building that

muscle of becoming an authority.

So what's an example of something where the sender may have been

hesitant to hit the send button that actually created this kind of

groundswell of reaction that you just.

if I can tell a story about myself this time, because it was interesting.

Absolutely.

Cause I advise people to do this all the time and I think it's

important that we take our own medicine.

So I developed a program called Soloist Women, and I had no idea how many

women there really were in my audience.

I wasn't really sure I'd never developed a product or a service

that was gender specific.

And I just had this fear that because in, in our profession, it's generally about

70% male, 30% female, and my clientele was heavily male, and I thought, okay,

what's going happen when I put this out is I'm going have this whole slew of

people who are going to unsubscribe.

And that's it.

My business is over my life is over.

I that's the kind of things that we go through our head.

And when I finally hit the send button, not only did that not

happen, I had a couple people say, oh, please unsubscribe me from this.

But it was the opposite.

It was, it got to both the people that it was targeted for, soloist women,

but also a number of soloist men who said, yeah, I have this same issue.

Keep me on the list.

So I don't know that I would call it a groundswell, but it was one

of those things where I made it to be such a horrible thing in my

head that I was taking this big risk and I had fear around it.

And, there was no reason.

There was no reason to have it at all, but that's the kind of

thing that we have to get over.

And I'm always going argue that as, authority builders let's call it that

cause they don't want to feel like somebody sees this as like the mountain

peak and you have to get to the mountain.

It's that we're all building authority all the time.

And in order to keep doing that, we have to keep experimenting with taking

risk and it's not all going go well.

When is an example, when you may have tried

something that didn't go so well.

Oh gosh, there are a lot of those.

You set yourself up for this.

I know I did.

I really did, as I said that, I'll give you an example.

I came up with, it wasn't just one email.

It was a series, but I violated the cardinal rule, which I will never

violate again about eight years ago.

I think I designed this program and it was, Basically to, so that people

could get what I would do, one on one with clients in a group setting.

And I put everything in that program.

I love this thing.

I had 35 videos.

I had transcripts, I had this whole thing.

I built this Mecca and I had three people buy it and I was hoping to get like 50, I

thought would be good the first time out, I had three people buy it and I went, Ugh.

And, yeah, that was not great.

And when I played with it and I ran it a second time, cause I thought, I've

put all this effort into it at, I'm just going try selling it differently.

Let me play with this and see what I can do.

Crickets.

Absolute crickets.

So yeah.

Yeah, that was not pretty.

I was not happy.

And, and I learned from the experience, but I am glad I experimented, it

taught me a very valuable lesson that apparently I needed to learn.

Which is?

Do your research before you design a program and give

your audience what they want to buy.

As long as, it matches up with your zone of genius and how you want to deliver.

Ask your audience and listen.

So Rochelle, those are actually two great examples.

And I'm wondering what was going through your mind right before you hit the send

button in both of those cases that enabled you to actually hit the send button.

In one case you had this great result.

In the other case, you had something that was a little disappointing shall we say.

Yeah,

the disappointing one and it was a lot disappointing.

What made me press the button?

There was all the investment I had made and I don't mean just monetary.

My psyche was in that I like my, I was wrapped up in my ego was wrapped up in

that, so I ha I had to press the button.

How could I have worked on this for, two and a half months, almost

solid, and not press the button.

So it was that pressure to press the button.

On the one that went well, it actually, it, wasn't very hard to press the button.

I, what I said was true, all those things went through my head, but it, I had

also done a heck of a lot of research.

I had, 13 individual calls with people in the space.

They, I was getting the same message over and over again.

I even got feedback that my price was too low, so I raised the price.

So there was a part of me, and when I finally hit the button, what I

said was if there's a lot of people who don't like it, that's okay.

As long as the people I've designed this for do.

And even if they didn't buy it, I wanted them to have a positive reaction.

I wanted them to say, yeah, I'm not ready for this cause

I had an income requirement, but I'm ready for the next one.

So that it was easier to hit the button on the second one.

But I didn't feel like I had to, the way that I did on the first one.

Rochelle, how long does it take to build a

financially viable authority business?

Oh, good question.

I think a lot of it depends on what you come in with and I'll

give you a couple of examples.

I've had clients where it's almost immediate and the reason I say

almost immediate is they lined up a bunch of things for themselves.

They had thought about it.

They thought about consulting.

They had lined up potential clients.

Maybe they had consulted a little bit at some point in their

career, or they operated their corporate job, like a consultant.

There are a lot of people that do that.

And when I say immediate, it's immediate in the sense that they're making money.

It's not the business of their dreams yet, but they've

started and they've made money.

I worked with someone recently who struggled for almost three years,

and we worked together to better position what he was doing, but this is

someone who already was an authority.

And this that's what was so interesting.

He had built a lot of authority, but he had not monetized it

in a way that made sense.

And it turned on a dime.

It was about, I shouldn't say a dime.

I didn't, I'm sure it didn't feel like a dime to him.

It was about six months in total, but part of that was that they had to get used

to saying the message in a different way and not gulping at the price that, that

they now were requiring from clients.

And that incidentally that's a person who probably could break a

million dollars in a solo consulting business, without leverage.

And that's pretty rare.

And when I say leverage, either you're selling products, that you don't have

to actually deliver yourself or you're hiring employees to deliver services.

Yeah.

Rochelle, are there elements of your business model that are common

for authority businesses, and not common for expert businesses?

When you go from expert to authority, are there elements of your business

model itself that are likely to be new?

I think the biggest difference is just that, you hear people

say, you need to work on the business is that's built into my day, baked

into everything that I, my clients and anybody'll encounter who's in authority.

They've baked it into their business.

And by that, I mean that you're writing, you're thinking, you're

speaking, you are connecting with influencers in the sense of people

who influence your ideal audience.

And so you are spending, if not a portion of every day, then certainly a hefty

portion of every week, thinking about those things and working on those things.

That's the biggest difference.

Okay.

and when you say thinking about, or actively doing those things,

are you talking about time that you're not getting paid by clients.

Yes.

Yes.

you really have to carve out some time.

You can't do it without carving out the time to invest in building authority and

it, you can design it a lot of different ways, so it can take the least amount of

time possible to get the maximum result.

But it is it, there is time that one must spend developing authority.

The beauty of it is once you get to a certain point, there are

lots of ways you can leverage authority and then it gets easier.

I think it feels hardest at the beginning because we're so conditioned

to, oh, I have to spend my time.

I have to build my time, especially if you're billing by the hour, cause

every hour has a dollar value on it.

When you look at it that way, when you start to think about

yourself as building authority.

It's less about how much you're getting in that hour, but how much

you are building for the future and where you want to take your business.

Yeah, no, that's a great point.

Rochelle, we have covered a lot of territory in a short amount of time.

We could go on a lot longer, but I want to recognize that, people can

also get in touch with you directly to access some material you have,

get a copy of your book, and get in touch with you if they're interested.

Where would be the best place for them to go.

And, and is there something special that you wanted to mention

with regard to this episode?

Yeah, so the best place to go is my website, which is RochelleMoulton.com.

There's a ton of free resources and downloads there's links to social media,

and I've also put up the description of my Soloist Women mastermind, and

I'm starting the next one in September.

So if that's something of interest, check it out and, and you could

reach me via email through there.

Great.

Rochelle, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to

join us today on Smashing the Plateau and share your insights.

My guest has been Rochelle Moulton, who turns independent

consultants into authorities.

Thank you again, Rochelle, for joining us.

Thanks so much, David.

I really appreciate it.

When you visit the Smashing the Plateau website at smashingtheplateau.com, you'll

find a summary of each episode, along with the links we mention on the show.

On today's episode with Rochelle Moulton, we learned how to go

from expertise to authority along with big financial benefits.

Are you building your consulting, coaching, or small business following a

long career as an employed professional?

Are you tired of trying to build your business alone?

Come meet other consultants, coaches, and small business owners on Friday,

August 26th, at 12 noon Eastern Time.

We're having an open house so that you can experience a bit of what we do in

the Smashing the Plateau Community.

You'll have an opportunity to think more critically about your work,

meet colleagues who want to support your success and learn how a curated

community can help empower you to make progress toward your goals.

To register for the open house go to smashingtheplateau.com/openhouse.

That's smashingtheplateau.com/openhouse.

At Smashing the Plateau, our mission is empowering high achieving professionals

to do what they love and get paid with their worth -- as entrepreneurs.

I'm David Shriner-Cahn.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to our show.